Originally Posted by
kk
Clearly you are pretty dug in on the whole EV thing, to the point where you can't admit there are any issues. Actually the issues are pretty significant:
The worst aspect is that they are only a fig leaf in terms of environmental impact (not just Co2 emissions, but other impacts too) when you include both the manufacturing side including (grossly unsustainable) mining of raw materials, battery manufacture and disposal, and electricity generation.
Next is range, where the official figures are simply not worth the paper they are printed on, and motoring journalists collude in this by reporting figures without use of heating, aircon or lights.
Finally, they are also more expensive than normal cars - stupidly so in many cases when you list out their failings in direct comparison, and it takes quite a few years (if ever) for fuel costs to make up the price difference (by which time you have hugely expensive battery packs to replace ...)
Great for virtue signalling though and maybe that's where most of us get irritated.
The whole thing has been rushed into, before proper technology is available to provide like for like replacement for ICE vehicles. Of course people who are invested in it are going claim it's all fine and dandy (with the exception of a few brave journos who have written at length on their regret). But I still maintain, even if ICE is going to disappear, EV is not good enough as a replacement (indeed, compared to ICE, EV has barely improved in 120 years). Hydrogen fuel cells though, once the teething issues can be dealt with, have to be the future.
The biggest impact of the move away from ICE will be on the more poorly paid. My son is a care worker in rural Somerset, he has a 25 mile each way trip and runs a £1000 banger. (I'm looking to get him something a bit better soon). Where's he supposed to get £30k from for a glorified milk float?
The Uk is less than 1% of world carbon emissions (despite being the fifth largest economy) and is already one of the lowest carbon societies in the world. On the global scale, it matters very little what we do from here, and everything about what the US, China and India do - it's all down to geopolitics.
But the only thing less edifying that individual people virtue signalling is countries doing it, eg Macron and Johnson willy waving over banning ICE - frankly a disgrace, cheap, headline-grabbing PR pumped out long before any sensible plan has been put together.